Sacred and Secular in Medieval and Early Modern Cultures

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xviii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • Lawrence Besserman

      Pages 1-15

3. Medieval and Early Modern Literature: Lyric, Narrative, and Drama

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 17-17

      PDF

   2. The Imitation of Hagiographic Formulas in Occitanian Vidas (Lives of the Troubadours)

      • Cyril Aslanov

      Pages 19-27

   3. “Quid Hinieldus Cum Christo?”:The Secular Expression of the Sacred in Old and Middle English Lyrics

      • Thomas G. Duncan

      Pages 29-46

   4. Reading Radical Metonymy in Pearl

      • Alan J. Fletcher

      Pages 47-61

   5. Purchasing Pardon: Material and Spiritual Economies on the Canterbury Pilgrimage

      • Alastair Minnis

      Pages 63-82

   6. Sacred and Secular in The Merchant of Venice

      • Murray Roston

      Pages 83-98

4. Medieval and Early Modern History: Church and State

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 99-99

      PDF

   2. The Communal Body, the Corporate Body, and the Clerical Body: An Anthropological Reading of the Gregorian Reform

      • Lior Barshack

      Pages 101-121

   3. Sacred, Secular, and Impure: The Contextuality of Sensations

      • Esther Cohen

      Pages 123-133

   4. Secular and Sacred: The History of Rhetoric and Religious Community in the Middle Ages

      • Rita Copeland

      Pages 135-147

   5. Sacred Authority and Secular Power: The Historical Argument of the Gesta Episcoporum Cameracensis

      • Robert M. Stein

      Pages 149-165

   6. The Space of the Altar

      • Miri Rubin

      Pages 167-176

5. Back Matter

   Pages 177-238

   PDF

This book illuminates the pervasive interplay of 'sacred' and 'secular' phenomena in the literature, history, politics, and religion of the Middle Ages and Early Modern periods. The essays gathered here constitute a new way of applying a classic dichotomy to major cultural phenomena of the pre-modern era.

• drama
• early modern period
• English literature
• history
• Middle Ages
• Narrative
• rhetoric
• space
• William Shakespeare
• British and Irish Literature

• The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

  Lawrence Besserman

LAWRENCE BESSERMAN is currently a Professor of English, specializing in Old and Middle English literature, especially Chaucer, at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

Policies and ethics